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TCG Pets GiveawayWoWTCGLoot was nice enough to send us some things to give away again this year, so a big thanks to them! We are starting with some pets and one month Curse Premium codes. This time around, half of the prizes will go to people replying to this news post and half will go to people entering through WoWDB contributions.

Currently WoWDB entries have a higher chance to win, as less people are participating, so if you are really interested in winning, take a look! Making useless comments like "This is a great pet" is a great way to get disqualified from the contest!

You can earn additional entries by leaving a useful comment on WoWDB pages. If you try to spam to get more entries, you will be disqualified from the contest. Comments that aren't constructive and useful will be removed. Comments that repeat what is already on the page or in another comment without adding anything of value will be removed.

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Entering more than once per contest thread is useless and will get you disqualified. There will be no 2nd chance for people posting more than one comment in this thread, you have been warned. (We will also of course check for double accounts, etc)

You have until Friday February 1st @ 11:59 PM EST to enter the contest. After that time this thread will be closed and winners will be selected randomly.

Addon Review: World Boss Status
Now that you have had time to level alts, you may have trouble remembering which alts have done which world bosses each week. World Boss Status is a very simple addon that will save kills per character for you. It can output the information to chat, a minimap button tooltip, or utilize one of the LibDataBroker displays, such as ChocolateBar or Bazooka.

Content Difficulty Feedbackthe comparison made the console games - i completely agree. this is an MMORPG. why should it require 3 seperate difficulty levels? this is NOT a console game, it should not be adjustable to suit any 1 persons play style on principle of the genre. dont even try to twist this point. MMORPG's are Mass Multiplayer, more than a few peoples ideas are required to completely overhaul a part of the system such as raids. you even created LFR to solve this problem. just because they want to select a higher difficulty does NOT mean it should be made easier. i don't go on to call of duty and select Veteran difficulty as a noob and expect it to be easy, and anyone who does is NOT worth affecting the play styles of others.
World of Warcraft is neither the first MMO to have varying levels of difficulty, nor the only one. You can't compare it to a completely different game (Call of Duty) as it doesn't even share the same genre nor the same design philosophies or game design.

If you look at the MMO world you'll see other titles do also adjust the difficulty of their content, in fact, there's a very popular case of such a boss in another MMO, which I won't name here for obvious reasons.

You killing normal Elegon doesn't effect my HC Elegon. When you come and ask MY elegon to be nerfed, then it affects my game. Otherwise i wouldn't care less what they do with 'your' Elegon as long as I can try and kill 'my' Elegon or wipe on 'my elegon' till i learn to move from the floor in time
It's not "your" heroic Elegon though (neither "their" normal Elegon). But there's something that has been said on this thread that is true. As much as some hardcore players love to blame the casuals when 'their' content has been nerfed in the past, the fact is, you'll rarely see threads asking for heroic bosses to be nerfed. Sure, you'll find the occasional thread here and there, but it's far from common.

Let me make it clearer by an example: We were slowly but surely progressing on spine of deathwing when the nerfs started rolling in. Beat spine when it was nerfed by 10%, and Madness when it was nerfed 15%. This made us feel cheated. We did not feel that we had succeeded in killing those bosses the way they were meant to be killed, it even borderlined on a feeling of shame, as there was another top guild on the server that beat both at 0% 3 weeks earlier.
3 weeks earlier? Did they turn the debuff off? Because in fact, it took 3 months for the debuff to go from 0% to 15%:http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3599256 (5%, January 31)http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3746119 (10%, February 28)http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3899863 (15%, March 26)

But still, it's a fair point that your accomplishment felt diminished because of a debuff tackled on the boss. That's the reason why in Mists of Pandaria there're the "Cutting Edge" achievements for the three final Heroic bosses of the current tier (in fact, on the Patch 5.2 PTR they currently read "defeated before the discovery of Throne of Thunder), so although this isn't Dragon Soul and there're no nerfs in place, you have a good reason to actually try to chase those kills and earn a reward that will, no doubt, be rare among raiders come 5.2. You'll be able to show that Feat of Strength and say "I killed it before 5.2".

Also, we didn't have the Item Upgrade system that is available right now (although it'll be going away with the arrival of 5.2, at least temporarily), so the panorama you're looking at right now is vastly different than that of Dragon Soul, even if it feels like not that much has happened since then. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

ClassesWhy does Blizzard hate options so much? Talents, Upgrades, many stats went away. Do you think players are stupid?
On the contrary, players are so smart that they "solved" the simplistic talent design too quickly and never looked at it again. (Source)So the new talent system ISN'T that good after all? What are you gonna do, then? Change it all over again in 6.0?
I didn't mean to imply the new model isn't good. We're happy with it overall, just changing some that aren't used enough. (Source)

Hey GC, for how long are Arcane and Affliction going to remain 8-10% above all other classes/specs on bosses overall?
Probably until 5.2. We think they are both overpowered, but not so bad that hotfixes are critical. We'll keep an eye on it. (Source)

.…based on damage alone, is there any other path to achieve that goal?
Very progression-oriented guilds appreciate the non-DPS aspects of each spec. Other players just focus on the stack rank of DPS. (Source)

GC, why do we have confusing abilities like Rapid Fire which don't trigger GCD, yet still can't be used during a GCD?
Abilities off the GCD tend to get macro'd unless they are very situational. Macros shouldn't make decisions for you. (Source)

I'd rather a glyph be effective and boring than interesting but rarely used.
What's the point in having the system at all though if you're not going to think about which glyphs you want? (Source)

*more* class distinction, yet the trend has been to homogenize classe? This sounds like an opinion rather than a direction.
No, actually a direction, but at the same time we have to keep players happy and when their character don't work, they aren't. (Source)

Any plans on fixing the Vanish bugs atm? I seem to be getting pulled out of stealth quite often after vanishing.
We haven't heard many complaints about Vanish not working since we totally rebuilt it a year or two ago. Any more details? (Source)You could vanish a cheapshot or deathcoil, you can still do it, but you're CC'ed IN vanish which is extremely lame.
It was also really buggy BC of server lag and spells already in flight. "Fix Vanish" was probably the number one request we got. (Source)

Does WoW have too many buttons? What's the long-term thinking since you like to add new abilities every expac? Hard to keybind
Totally agree. On the other hand, leveling up and not getting new spells is pretty lame too. We don't have a great solution yet. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)What is your opinion on AMS, IBF, and Death Pact not being usable while silenced? Seems comparable to deterrence and disarms.
Silence is one of the few ways to stop a DK. We don't want to make things harder to counter.... (Source)

Don't you realise how stupid it is to have 2h and DW play differently and really on different damage-types (frost/physical)?
Why is it stupid? It provides some choice to the player especially depending on what gear drops. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Balance druids need a fix. Badly. I've died so many times that the game is more frustration than fun.
In this case, I'm not sure it's a class balance problem. Unless you're a tank, Pandaria can be deadly while leveling. (Source)
There are a lot of challenging quests leveling through MoP. We wanted to make the world feel more dangerous like it used to. (Source)

What are your plans for rdruid in 5.2 pvp. Will you be buffing hots?
We don't think so, but we do want to make sure they keep enough pressure if Cyclone stays nerfed. (Source)

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)If we are talking fun, to wit: tedious ramp-up times, rune of power feels stifling,and Arcane Blast spell effect visual hidden
Would the ramp up feel better if it was 3 stacks again but more DPS per stack? (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)the spell power of ret pally does not benefit from SP 10% buff, is this a bug?
Not a bug. Their attack power is increased, which gives them spell power indirectly. (Source)

Hungering Cold was scapped because you thought it was a stun, while ironically giving a stun to dks and that move to paladins.
We kept buffing Blinding Light because paladins thought it was weak in beta. We were wrong. It's probably okay for Ret as instant (Source)
I had forgotten we had changed it from a stun, but that wasn't why we yanked it. It was the instant AE part. (Source)

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Shadow priests severely lack burst dmg in a form of a strong CD. Any plans on adding new cooldowns or improving current?
Surge of Darkness and Mindbender are decent burst buttons and we're trying to redesign Insanity to provide a third. (Source)

chakra cooldown needs to be removed. is there a reason to keep a 30-second cd ? it's not a choice, it's a pain.
With no cooldown, you aren't making any choices about your healing focus. You're just changing it whenever it suits you. (Source)

nerfing Disc would create 2 underpowered specs. Wouldn't it make more sense for both to meet eachother halfway?
Holy competes fine with the other healers. Disc is just so powerful that unless you're stubborn, you probably go Disc. (Source)

You sir are an idiot. Nerf a good spec to make a shitty one seem ok.... really.......Holy has way bigger issues.
That's not how we see it. Holy posts bad numbers because there are 5-10X as many priests playing Disc (and beating other healers) (Source)Then where are all priests ? playing as a shadow ? Or you want more disc in PvP ? and more holy in PvE ?
Disc is overpowered in PvE and underpowered in PvP. We're trying to solve both. (Source)Doesn't Disc tend to post better numbers than direct healing just because absorbs go before direct heals?
Yes. But that still means Disc is doing more for the group than the healers who are getting their heals sniped. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)when 5.2 drops can we have a glyph that keeps shuriken toss like 5.1??
What do you like about the 5.1 version? (We usually don't glyph specific talents.) (Source)

Interested to see if PTR feedback favors C&D or H&R... would you consider going back if H&R wins out?
If players react really positively to it, then yes, we'd consider it. Our internal feedback is good but not flawless. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Blood fear feels limited with changes. Only melee and pets directly hit them.
We agree the pets might be a problem. Could make pets not charge or trigger it, but that might be a nerf too. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Warrior Question: Do you feel that both Arms and Fury (both versions) will be enhanced in the upcoming patch 5.2 in PVE?
Depends on what you mean by "enhanced." Fury doesn't need any more DPS in PvE. Arms might need a little. (Source)

if you want to balance SW without changing the % heal per sec, why don't you just change when SW starts, like below 20% or 25%
In PvP, you might spend only seconds at that percent. (Source)

The new haste bonus for Warriors, does it double Haste just from gear or all buffs? (Heroism/Potions/Raid Gimmicks.)
Should be all haste, but you can compare it to the Enhance one which works similarly. (Source)

increasing Slam dmg might seem like a remedy to TfB/HS removal, between MS,OP, and ColSmash, warriors almost never use Slam
It's already at what 220% on PTR? But we agree more Slams makes the Arms rotation even in PvP more interesting. (Source)

In fact, Warriors in arenas almost dont use SW. The healers dont risk letting SW work. SW is ok in duels and bg
Not sure I'd agree. We see almost every PvP warrior with SW. If it never got used I think they might try another talent. (Source)

PvETrue or false: in Raid Finder, using an elder charm *might* result in a Sigil of Power.
False. (Source)

Any plans to introduce a system to help out those who are unlucky with drops? 3 coins every week on Sha of Fear, no upgrades.
We're talking about it. My sense is many of the players who complain about the loot model have been super unlucky, which sucks. (Source)

then why are you testing the next raid at an heroic ilvl? A tiny minority of casuals will have 502 at tier's end.
Because your ilevel will increase as you do the new content. Not everyone can clear normal on week one. (Source)

also, are you planning for the 5.0 raids to still give out VP in 5.2? It could hurt a lot if not, specially small guilds.
Yeah, at the moment we are. It might be less than today, but they seem like a good valor option. (Source)

Heroic Garalon 25 down - although I wasn't in for the fight. No real cleave. Sigh. you are my only hope
Typically successful groups only have 4-5 cleaving in a Garalon 25. More than that, and you may be wasting DPS. (Source)

How do you not see fewer options? IIRC WotLK had dungeons and quests, Cata had dungeons and quests, Mists has quests only...
What did you get from the quests in LK once you were max level? And why don't you run the MoP dungeons? Great source of valor. (Source)

pve dungeons for rep to get pve gear makes sense your statement about dungeons for pvp gear makes you look stupid.
The point was dungeons offer epics and valor. Why do they also need to offer additional bonuses? They are rewarding already. (Source)Dungeons are right now a near worthless piece of content after reaching item level 463. Give us a reason to run
They have rare epics and they are an efficient source of valor (esp. first of the day). Don't you always grow out of dungeons? (Source)how about a tabard that grants you rep in dungeons, but doesn't let you loot any gear?
That still lets you get around the daily rate of progression that the quests provide. We don't want "Finish in one week." (Source)

I fear where WoW is going if you can't see that the reason ppl return from newer MMOs is the dungeons and endgame, not quests.
We think the game works better with a mix of dungeons and questing. (Source)

The buzz seems to be that most "normal" raiders are either behind their usual pace or are resigned to LFR. On your radar?
Is this anything other than the tier being pretty big? (Source)

vs why should I log in every day and grind all week for upgrades too small to notice?
Because the alternative is it feels mandatory to cap valor every single week, no matter what else is going on in life. (Source)

but you can't spend the damn valor without daily quests. The gear doesn't need the rep requirement.
The 5.2 valor gear requires a rep, but it's not a rep you earn from dailies. (There is also a daily rep like in 5.1.) (Source)

FutureIs this rumor I'm hearing about you saying *NO* new dungeons in MoP true? They're my favorite group content!
There isn't a new dungeon in 5.2. As far as I know, that's all we've said. (Source)

Hey GS, I know Transmog is all being patched up in 5.2, but have you guys thought of allowing the enchant effect to mog?
We have thought about it. We don't have the tech to do it at the moment. (Source)

Where do you get t15 on the ptr?
You can't ATM. You could kill the bosses, but we're considering (not promising) letting you just buy the gear to try the sets out (Source)

do you think we could see the path of the titans concept return to maybe re-expand the talent system since it was rebooted?
I still love the idea. Hope to bring it back someday. (Source)Expected this comment to be about skirmish arenas, oh well
Hope to bring those back someday too. (Source)

Any chance to see old poison proc animation for Rogues in 5.2? Would be a GREAT minor glyph, I loved the visual back then.
It's a technical issue. Weapons can only display one enchant effect at a time. A common request though so maybe there's an answer. (Source)

Ghosty we want the visual of the quiver, not the actual item! We want to pull arrows out of something when we shoot!
It's on our wish list, but we don't have an ETA. (Source)

Will plate classes ever see strength polearms, or at least polearm transmogrification, again?
It's hard to answer "ever." We would like to have them and we think players would too. We don't have an ETA though. (Source)

I saw post about quivers . I guess the players aren't expecting to have quivers slots but at least a visual quivers look .
Yeah I understand that now. It's on the list, but I can't give an ETA. We always want to do more than we can at one time. (Source)I assume that's the same answer you'd have to give about the proving grounds concept, right?
Less code and art time required for those, so they're higher on the list. (Source)

Is MMO-Champ correct that the warlock quest rewards a 489 ring? Isn't 489 a little low for a 5.2 epic?
The quest isn't far enough along to be able to meaningfully data mine anything out of it. The plan is still for 5.2 though. (Source)

Sunsong Ranch changes sound good. Now allow some personalization and some item storage space, and we've got player housing.
Isn't an important part of player housing being able to show off your stuff? (Source)Why can't either the party leader set which member's phase to be in (for housing) or lowest phase layer for helping others.
Yeah we'd like to do that. Would help make phasing less disruptive. (Source)

MiscAll you do is gate people's enjoyment in the game. Get 90 lesser charms, get elders, do sha/ganon profit. login next week.
Games are about overcoming obstacles. Our data suggests people quit playing when things are too easy or convenient. (Source)

can the reforge guy take a vacation as well?.. and on an unrelated note, can you get rid of feasts all together?
And durability, and travel, and maybe flasks and... wait, where did the game go? (Source)

wait are you saying if a majority of people don’t like something?
I'm saying most players aren't in a position to conduct a scientific poll. (Source)

I´m curious if the changes you make are based on more feedback than 200 players. If you ever publish any feedback that is...
Totally depends on the change. Some based on the habits of millions of players. Others because of 1 insightful post. It's not a vote (Source)

With all due respect, if you disagree with simcraft, then show us your internal one, afraid that we will find mistakes?
We are the designers. If you disagree with our design, the burden of proof is on your to convince us we're wrong. (Source)we are the financiers the burden is on you to keep us happy and paying. prove US wrong. =D =P
Agree that it's our job to keep you happy. Disagree that proving sims right or wrong is the most effective way to do that. (Source)

Where do you base your ideas of balance on? The general vibe or actual (representation) numbers?
For things like DPS, the real numbers. You can't test how effective a CC chain is in PvP though. We rely more on feedback then. (Source)
And even in the case of DPS, we will make changes if players can't hit the expected numbers or use different rotations etc. (Source)

To be specific, Do you care if a player is happy with the game as long as they keep playing?
Yes, in life you also have to pay bills. But why spend your short years on Earth making a game that players just tolerate? (Source)
Most devs I know are in this business because they want to make games people like. It's a passion, not a means to a quick buck. (Source)

What do you mean with "sampling bias."?
Players sometimes view logs as how much DPS everyone *can* do. That's not what logs measure. That's the bias. (Source)
Say X is 2% higher DPS than Y. All the best skilled and geared players go X, further inflating X to maybe 10% higher than Y. (Source)

I left because some high rated arena players told me i didn't had what it takes, brought down my motivation.
Unfortunately, one of our community's favorite things to do is tell others that they're doing it wrong. (Source)

So basically you guys were full of shit when you promised aerial combat in WG on the WOTLK original box?
Our philosophy is to try not to ship bad designs just so we can say we shipped them. Players get angry, but angrier if it's bad. (Source)

from the sounds of it, you're already contemplating quitting twitter.what are you going to do if twitter doesn't work out?
Reddit? Pintrest? Not giving up yet. (Source)

How many people is considered a lot at that point?
It only takes a single person to make a compelling point to have us consider it. (Source)

Why do people so rude to you when they talk about game balance?
Not sure. Maybe they feel they have to be loud to get attention or else they're just frustrated and can't help themselves. (Source)

the most important thing you guys learned from Cata going into Mists?
Don't let players quickly run out of things to do! (Source

You say WoW isn't good as single player game but many quests suck/are frustrating in groups or w/others around. Thoughts?
It's a fair criticism. Seeing / playing with other players of your faction should generally be a bonus not a penalty. (Source)

Please don't ignore our valid concerns because of one player's attitude. Please read some of our suggestions.
I wouldn't punish a class because of a few bad apples. (Source)plumbers don't refuse to fix x problem because basement too cluttered/gunky. Maybe wade into class forums once in a blue moon?
Good plumbers don't cause more leaks though. Even the simple PTR thread I started brought several "I feel ignored" posts. (Source)

I don't see there being much maintenance required for a vanilla server. You guys would get a ton of old players back for sure.
It would be a ridiculous amount of maintenance. Nearly every patch fix would have to be made twice. (Source)

Guild Wars 2 Flame and Frost: Prelude Update
The previously talked about patch is finally live! It brings new daily achievements, Living Story events, playing as a guest on another world, home world transfers for a gem fee, culling changes, and lots of bugfixes and polish. See the full notes for details.

Curse Weekly Roundup
THQ is finally granted the rights to sell, FIFA takes Black Ops 2 for a ride of it's own, and new content and announcements for big 2013 games; all in this Curse Weekly Roundup